Need help in creating quest/mission/task.

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I am a novice game developer. Currently working on a small game project made by myself. I can deal with graphics, but with coding and blueprints I have some problems. All that I need is to make a simple quest system, nothing too complex. I will try to explain what do I want to make and if someone knows any tutorials, forum threads, tips, pieces of advice I would be very grateful.

P.S. I am making a FP game, not a shooter.

So basically:

1) Player walks to an NPC or other thing like taskboard.2) Finds an available quest, takes it.3) The mission is to find 3 objects: A, B, C.( A HUD displaying these objects for player)4) Player found object A. This object disappears from the HUD.5) Player found all the remaining objects, delivers the, to a certain point, the quest is completed.6) After completion, another quest is unlocked and can be activated.

A good example of what I want is the newly made game Ben The Exorcist, where player needs to find some items in the house and then place them to finish the exorcism process.

I know that I am maybe asking for too much, but I don't even know where to start or how to start. As I said I can easily make a nice looking map, objects, entities, somehow animate it and so on, but I really need a lot of help in the "coding/blueprint sphere".

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I'd start with working through some unreal bluieprint toturials. That should give you some ideas of how things work.

After you did that, come back to your game to see how to apply what you have learned.

You may also try to find a dedicated unreal forum for blueprint users. This site is more a general public which may not have all detailed blueprint knowledge that you need.

First of all thanks for a quick reply!

Another question. What will be more complicated: learning blueprints from scratch and then using them or trying to make this quest system with C++(I have basic knowledge, nothing too special, don't know any pointers, vectors or so on).

And also what should I search if I want to find tutorials on my topic? Collecting items quest? Collectibles? Skyrim-like quests?

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I had this same issue last year when I had to create a narrative game from scratch for my internship.

You asked :

4 hours ago, Martin1999 said:

What will be more complicated: learning blueprints from scratch and then using them or trying to make this quest system with C++

My answer : Well it's about application architecture. You should learn about OOP, exploited byC++ and Blueprints. I'm sure Blueprints is less complicated than C++. But if I were you, I would take C++ because it will give you a good basis for learning other languages.

Once OOP assimilated, search about Design patterns. These are very useful, precisely the State pattern for your case.

State pattern mechanism is like an oriented graph with specific processes for each state.

Viet Khang

Edited August 12, 2017 by VietKhangLH

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My answer : Well it's about application architecture. You should learn about OOP, exploited byC++ and Blueprints. I'm sure Blueprints is less complicated than C++. But if I were you, I would take C++ because it will give you a good basis for learning other languages.

What exactly is OOP? Thanks for suggesting C++, but if my main goal is to make this basic quest system and nothing else, wouldn't blueprints be less time consuming and easier to start with? Because you know, I don't want to make something very complicated, just one thing, that's all, so I don't want to go too deep into coding or smth.

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if my main goal is to make this basic quest system and nothing else, wouldn't blueprints be less time consuming and easier to start with?

Blue prints at least seem simpler, I don't know them so I cannot say for sure though.

6 hours ago, Martin1999 said:

Because you know, I don't want to make something very complicated, just one thing, that's all

No offence, but at your expertise level, you likely cannot judge complexity of your idea. What may look simple to you can be horribly complicated in reality. Computers have a very hard time doing seemingly simple things. I have this same problem with robots. Complete teams there spend eons on picking up an object, I mean, how can that be difficult?? Grab the thing, and lift from the table, how hard can that be??? Yet apparently it is, or they wouldn't need a whole team for it, right? It's very hard to estimate how difficult something is unless you already know how to do it.

There is only one way to find out how difficult it really is, and that is by trying to realize it. So start reading about, and experimenting with blueprints.

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It is one way to think. In program, there are data and proccesses. OOP encapsulates them in objects.

Forget about code and imagine you are a master cook. Data become ingredients and processes the instructions. Your IDE (Unreal Engine, or Visual Studio or whatever) is your kitchen. You can assimilate objects as your created meals and class as the recipes.

10 hours ago, Martin1999 said:

wouldn't blueprints be less time consuming and easier to start with?

Sure. Begin with Blueprints. Time is so important after all. You will learn a lot since it's your first programming language.

10 hours ago, Martin1999 said:

I don't want to make something very complicated, just one thing, that's all

It is a respectable and responsible will. Making pretentious projects which won't succeed is a good way to end up disgruntled with computing.

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If you Googled it, you'd find that it stands for Object Oriented Programming, and you'd also find a lot of information about what that means exactly.

I googled like "OOP UE4" and couldn't understand what that was, sorry for dumb questions

3 hours ago, Alberth said:

No offence, but at your expertise level, you likely cannot judge complexity of your idea. What may look simple to you can be horribly complicated in reality. Computers have a very hard time doing seemingly simple things. I have this same problem with robots. Complete teams there spend eons on picking up an object, I mean, how can that be difficult?? Grab the thing, and lift from the table, how hard can that be??? Yet apparently it is, or they wouldn't need a whole team for it, right? It's very hard to estimate how difficult something is unless you already know how to do it.

There is only one way to find out how difficult it really is, and that is by trying to realize it. So start reading about, and experimenting with blueprints.

Thanks! So I'll do my best

15 minutes ago, VietKhangLH said:

Hi back Martin,

It is one way to think. In program, there are data and proccesses. OPP encapsulates them in objects.

Forget about code and imagine you are a master cook. Data become ingredients and processes the instructions. Your IDE (Unreal Engine, or Visual Studio or whatever) is your kitchen. You can assimilate objects as your created meals and class as the recipes.

Sure. Begin with Blueprints. Time is so important after all. You will learn a lot since it's your first programming language.

It is a respectable and responsible will. Making pretentious projects which won't succeed is a good way to end up disgruntled with computing.

-vk

Thanks for taking your time to reply, I'll consider it all

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I don't want to sound arrogant, but my goal is not to study the coding/blueprint sphere and then try to make it. Basically what I want is to find something similar to what I need, analyze it, and then create my own or just change that. Because I don't want to focus too much on learning the whole sphere. I just want to have this system created and then forget about it, focus more on game design, graphics and so on, because I'm better at that.

Thanks for understanding,

Martin

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Ah, ok. I wonder why you bother doing blueprint at all then, I mean, if you want to do game design, do game design. That would be in the game design forum (if you're not already posting there) rather than here, which is purely programming oriented.

I don't really know if such an example is available. You could try eg github or some other site for blueprint projects, or perhaps a forum about blueprints has some announcement-like sub-section or so.

Even if you don't aim for learning all about blueprint, it likely doesn't hurt to have some basic knowledge. Suppose you manage to find a piece of software, you would need to understand what you're looking at and where to change things, which implies you should have seen some blueprint code before, and preferably even made some things, since learning by doing still works the best.

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I'm afraid you don't understand me, I'm sorry if I can't explain it well enough. Basically my game will consist of:

1) graphics(meshes,map,animations etc)

2)very simple quest system, where player needs to find certain items, collect them, and then deliver them, nothing too special or complicated.

I'm having problems with the 2nd task, because as I said I don't know blueprints/coding sphere well enough to make it by myself. So I'm looking for help in this kind of forums, maybe some tutorials, guides on my topic, maybe something similar to what I want is already existing, I don't know.

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I googled like "OOP UE4" and couldn't understand what that was, sorry for dumb questions

15 hours ago, Martin1999 said:

I don't want to make something very complicated

Try googling "object oriented programming," then. If you don't understand what you find, then you know that it's more complicated than what you want, and you can ignore the advice to learn it (for now, at least).

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This site is divided in sections for : programmers, artists, music artists etc.

If you have good stuff programmers are happy to make a game with your things.

To bad i dont do fantasy stuff if you had mech/space stuff i can help you for a 2D game.

I know that it takes long, therefore I don't want anything huge. To truly understand me, please watch some of gameplay of this game: Ben the exorcist. You'll quickly understand what I want. I think it is not too hard or complicted, I agree it will take a lot of time, but it is possible, I'm not trying to make an openworld mmoprg and so on, just a little game.

P.S. But really, if you have the time, watch a short video from this game, you'll understand what item-collecting quest system I want to make:)

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Suppose i give you the system, where do you wanto implement it in ?, you have no project ?

Start with installing a compiler ?

I have everything prepared, believe me, UE4(blueprints+C++) project and Visual studio. But I don't want to start making a map and objects until I have this system running stable. Only after that I will be adding meshes, textures etc. I think this will be better for me. One of my projects ended like this, I had a well-made map with textures and meshes, but when I started making the whole mechanica of the game a realized that it was too complicated so all my effort went to trash can:(

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I'm having problems with the 2nd task, because as I said I don't know blueprints/coding sphere well enough to make it by myself. So I'm looking for help in this kind of forums, maybe some tutorials, guides on my topic, maybe something similar to what I want is already existing, I don't know.

I think the problem is understood, the solution is a bit more involved.

This is a general game programming site. Very few blueprints are being made here (in this sub-forum). We mostly suggest them to new users that are not ready for not interested in full programming.

As such, we likely don't have any tutorial. (I you want to know for real, you may want to check in the articles section, but that's the only place I know where it could exist. Don't expect much of it though if you manage to find one.)

There are no guides on specific game types. Most of the code is needed for every type, so it's not useful to specialize. The few general guides that exist step in at a much lower level, eg C++, or Python. and you don't want to go there.

We don't have a library of ready-made games, freely available. Many users here are indies that don't want their source linger around at public forums. Most other code eg at github is likely in the wrong language for you.

If you want help in the form of another person writing the code, there is the hobby classified section, where you can apply to a project, or ask for help in your project.

If you want to do it yourself, your best bet may be outside this site, at a forum specialized in blueprint coding. I have no idea where that is, but perhaps the unreal site knows. (Or else try a search engine.)

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